Forget WhatsApp and Messenger, contact me via my website

Showing all posts tagged: technology

Forget WhatsApp and Messenger, contact me via my website

2 May 2024

Despite their convenience, ease of sharing content, and even security, I steadfastly resist using the likes of WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, Telegram, Wire, Viber, and whatever else is out there. I probably infuriate friends and family by refusing to assimilate, but really feel I can only keep up with a certain number of communication channels: chiefly email and SMS/text messaging.

Even though I might only have two main means of communicating with the outside world, three if phone calls or Facetime are included, there’s also a number of secondary channels. Conversations and comments on social media (across a number of networks), forums, and an in-house work app (not Slack), are among them. Some of those interactions can be quite time consuming.

We’re probably carrying on more conversations than we realise, and that’s before we get to face-to-face interactions. I’ve barely written three paragraphs about communicating, and already I’m feeling overwhelmed. Exactly what I set out to avoid in shirking all those messaging apps in the first place. Needless to say then, a recent blog post by Robert Kingett, on the general subject, struck a chord:

“Yeah, found you! I couldn’t believe it dawg. I looked you up on Facebook a billion times, but the app just wasn’t showing you, at all. Neither in the message screen or the actual timeline or anything.”

“Well, you know I have a website now, so that’s where I post. I’m a Blogger now. I stay on my website.”

I’m a Blogger now. I stay on my website. That’s something that should be printed on t-shirts.

When I catch up with friends, they ask me: “how’s disassociated going?” Then a few minutes later, “oh, and are you on Whatsapp by any chance?” Sometimes I’d like to respond by saying, “well, I don’t need a messaging app, because you know you can reach me through my website. You know, the same one that predates Facebook, most of the social networks, and messaging apps.”

But I don’t. I just shake my head. And it can’t be all that bad after all. Some of my friends live interstate and overseas, and we still manage to meet in person when in each other’s respective places of residence, hassle free. All without the need to involve messaging apps, aside from some texts. If you’re an avid user of messaging apps — go for it — don’t let me dissuade you.

But if you want to reach me, you know where I’ll be.

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What happens to American TikTok influencers if the app is banned?

26 April 2024

A few days ago the United States Congress passed a law stipulating that video-sharing social network TikTok either be sold by Chinese owned company ByteDance, or face being banned in America. It seems like drastic move, but American lawmakers have their reasons.

The proposal has been on the table for some time, and when I heard about it early last year, I wondered what might happen to the American TikTok influencers, many of whom make a living through their activities on the app. I guess we’re going to find out.

Apparently nearly half of the US population are TikTok members, and a reasonable number of them would be deriving some sort of income from it. But I doubt US TikTok influencers could launch a campaign to have the law overturned, by encouraging voter turnout for a particular political party.

The law had strong bi-partisan support from both the Democrat and Republican parties, so the outcome of upcoming elections in the US would probably make no difference. From the point of view (I should say POV) of American TikTok members who livelihoods depend on the app, I hope a buyer favourable to the US government comes along, if that means TikTok continues operating in America.

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Tracking versus privacy, are Pay or Ok consent models ok?

23 April 2024

So called “pay or ok” consent models allow social media users to access services such as Facebook or Instagram, without adverts, if they’re prepared to pay a subscription. Otherwise they’ll see ads, possibly targeted ads, at some point, and obviously be OK with that. At face value, this seems reasonable. There’s no such as a free lunch. If people want to continue using big social networks, they either need to pay to do so, or accept the presence of ads.

But regulators at the European Union’s (EU) European Data Protection Board (EDPB) aren’t happy with the “pay or ok” arrangement. In particular, the idea of targeted advertising. Long story short, to place targeted ads in a social media user’s content feed, it’s necessary to track that user. This is something the EDPB objects to.

Instead, they’d prefer a third option. Freely available access to social media services, but with non-targeted advertising. This might be akin to radio and television advertising, where a more blanket approach is taken to ad placement. As far as the social networks go, this sort of strategy could prove to be hit and miss though. One or two revenue generating ads may be relevant to a user, but not enough to be viable.

I didn’t want to write in-depth today on the topic of online tracking, whether consensual or not, but a point John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball, made last week caught my eye. According to Gruber, the majority of EU residents, when it comes to the likes of Facebook and Instagram at least, prefer free access to these social networks, and are prepared to see targeted ads in return.

Gruber paraphrases late Apple founder Steve Jobs in making the point that people are smart, and perfectly capable of making informed choices when it comes to — in this instance — accepting targeted ads on their social media services. Gruber suggests regulatory bodies such as the EDPB believe many people are not so switched on though:

But Jobs was right too: people are smart, and they can — and should be allowed to — make their own decisions. And many people are more comfortable with sharing data than others. The privacy zealots leading this crusade in the EU do not think people are smart, and do not think they should be trusted to make these decisions for themselves.

That seems reasonable. Or is it? Jack Baty suggests the problem isn’t to do with how smart people are, but rather their general lack of concern. Particularly when it comes to comes to opting into targeted ads, in exchange for a payment-free social media experience.

I wouldn’t say I’m a zealot, but I think John mis-characterizes people here. It’s not that people aren’t smart, it’s that they don’t care. If we can’t get them to care about doing things that might be harmful to themselves or others, maybe the government should step in and care for them.

Baty’s point raises the question: how much thought are people really giving to some of the decisions they make? Do we indeed need the support of lawmakers because we may not be fully aware of what we’re agreeing to sometimes? It’s a pertinent point. For my part, I know I have, on occasion, clicked the “agree” button when presented with a text-wall of small print, so I can gain access to an app or service quickly.

Updates to the operating system of my smartphone are one example of what I mean. I try to skim read what I’m being asked to agree to, often numerous pages of legalese, but I can imagine many time-poor people would baulk at the prospect. Particularly those who need to use their phone urgently. And in doing so, not fully reading what they’re agreeing to, what tribulations might they be setting themselves up for later on?

People probably aren’t asked to read voluminous terms and conditions when agreeing to targeted ads appearing in their content streams, but are they aware of just what they’re signing away? The exact degree of privacy they might be forfeiting? Targeted ads can only be generated by tracking, but just how deep does this tracking go?

Meta AI, coming to your Instagram or Facebook page, like it or not

20 April 2024

Anyone checking into their Instagram or Facebook pages in the last few days, will have no doubt noticed the presence of Meta’s AI “assistant”, named, um, Meta AI.

Britney Nguyen, writing for Quartz:

The tech giant said on Thursday that it is bringing Meta AI to all of its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, calling it “the most intelligent AI assistant you can use for free.” The AI assistant can be used in platform feeds, chats, and search. Meta also said the AI assistant is faster at generating high quality images, and can “change with every few letters typed,” so users can see it generating their image.

Awesome.

On the Instagram iPhone app (mine at least), the search bar-like assistant hovers at the top of the search page, partly blocking content it sits above. Annoying. No, hold that, not annoying. Since the “default” content displayed on the search page is Meta “suggested” (for want of a better word) content, based on what they think you want to see — which just about couldn’t be any further from the mark — the AI bar actually helps obscure some of this rubbish.

Accordingly, I’d be in favour of a full screen size AI assistant, blocking all the useless meme-like junk appearing there. That would be “the most intelligent AI assistant you can use for free.”

AI Pin by Humane pricked by poor user reviews

15 April 2024

Fans of Star Trek series The Next Generation will be familiar with the communication devices crew members used. Or should I say: wore. The small, yet high powered, long range devices, were typically attached to the shirt of a crew person’s uniform.

With a mere tap, those on the surface of a planet could contact their vessel, which was usually somewhere in orbit, and speak to whomever they desired. Instantly, and with perfect clarity. What Star Trek fan didn’t want to own such a gizmo? A wearable that actually, really, worked?

For a time, it looked like Star Trek fans might see science fiction become fact. In March 2023 word seeped out that Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, both former Apple employees, were developing, through new venture, Humane, a device reminiscent of the venerable communicator.

Chaudhri and Bongiorno intended their device, powered by AI, and aptly named AI Pin, to be far more than a simple means of two-way communication though. In addition to making phone calls, the AI Pin can send messages, make appointments, take notes, answer questions, take photos, and record video, among other things. In fact, I’m surprised Star Trek creators never beefed up their wearable communicators, considering the devices would have had several hundred years of technological development behind them, by the time of the twenty-fourth century.

But weeks ago, after a year of hype and anticipation, tech journalists were given AI Pins test units to try out. Their experiences, however, have not been much to write home about. Humane claimed the AI Pin will replace the smartphone, but as David Pierce, consumer tech writer for The Verge found, the device is presently in no danger of replacing any phone, let alone a smartphone:

I’d estimate that half the time I tried to call someone, it simply didn’t call. Half the time someone called me, the AI Pin would kick it straight to voicemail without even ringing. After many days of testing, the one and only thing I can truly rely on the AI Pin to do is tell me the time.

Making phone calls (perhaps) isn’t the AI Pin’s only capability. It is, as noted above, meant to do all sorts of other things. Answering questions, that might otherwise be asked of a search engine, is one of them. But Cherlynn Low, writing for Engadget, struggled even with this:

When the AI Pin did understand me and answer correctly, it usually took a few seconds to reply, in which time I could have already gotten the same results on my phone. For a few things, like adding items to my shopping list or converting Canadian dollars to USD, it performed adequately. But “adequate” seems to be the best case scenario.

The AI Pin does not have a screen. Instead it projects information onto your hand. Your hand also doubles as a keyboard, which is needed to enter a passcode to unlock the device. This sounds well and good in theory, but practice is another matter, as Julian Chokkattu, Wired’s review editor, notes:

I’m going to say it now: Humane’s laser projector display is never going to take off as a viable method of interacting with a gadget. It’s overly sensitive and slow to navigate. When the projection lands on your palm, you have to tilt your hand around in a circular motion to scroll through the icons until you land on the one you want to select. But tilt too much, and it moves past the icon you want, landing on the thing next to it. It’s just plain annoying. Using the projected interface to run through old text messages is also a chore — and yes, you can ask the Ai Pin to read your messages, but that’s just not going to work all the time.

It’s fair to say early reviews are not encouraging. Which is disappointing, as I had high hopes for the concept. I’d watched Chaudhri and Bongiorno’s various presentations, and was impressed by the potential of the device. But I noted many of the trials we saw were conducted indoors, in relatively quiet environments. Which made me wonder; how might the device perform outside, in stormy conditions? Could you hear what a caller was saying? Could they hear you? Of this I am not sure.

It seems to me AI Pin shipped too soon. The device just seems to have too many problems for one deemed market ready. But these are early days, for both AI Pin, and the AI technologies that underpin it, so perhaps a device that performs to expectations, will eventually come forth.

Independent publishers jeopardised by Google search changes

8 April 2024

Google seems to have it in for small, and or independent publications and blogs… Google: whatever did we do to you?

Changes last month — known as core updates, which occur regularly — to the way the search giant indexes and ranks websites on search results, have seen scads of sites excluded from the listings. Google claimed one goal of recent core updates was to remove “low quality websites” from the rankings. This may have happened, but they’ve also taken out numerous sites publishing high quality content, in the process.

But some publishers found themselves out in the cold about six months ago, following the September 2023 core update. Retro Dodo, a UK based website that tests and reviews retro gaming products, has seen a sharp decline in traffic since then, something that threatens to wipe out the publication, according to Retro Dodo founder, Brandon Saltalamacchia:

Since September 2023, Google has hidden our site from millions of retro gamers, reducing our organic traffic and revenue by 85% and causing our business to be on the edge of going under.

Retro Dodo is not alone. HouseFresh, also based in Britain, is a publication assessing and writing about in-home air purifying products, has had the same experience. But that’s not all. HouseFresh has discovered that search results for the products they write about have been supplanted by lists compiled by other publishers, apparently based on recommendations supplied by people who have purchased the products in question.

There’s nothing wrong with user recommendations — many of us rely on them when considering a purchase — but the recommendations appearing in the search results suggest these products have been individually tested and reviewed by the publisher, when in fact they have not:

Savvy SEOs at big media publishers (or third-party vendors hired by them) realized that they could create pages for ‘best of’ product recommendations without the need to invest any time or effort in actually testing and reviewing the products first. So, they peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look.

This doesn’t look to me like low quality content has been removed from search results. And it’s only going to get worse. News broke recently of a deal between Google and news aggregation social network, Reddit, which will see Google granted access to Reddit’s content. This, we are told, will assist the search engine in the “training” of its AI models.

As if there’s not enough fluff in search results, it’s now going to be polluted with AI produced copy. Reddit is great when it comes to seeking out anecdotal information, or the opinions of others in regards to particular goods or services. Or to find out why the sirens of emergency service vehicles might be blaring in the neighbourhood. But as the basis of solid information for potential search query results? I’m not so sure.

There’s also the point that the Reddit members who wrote much of the content that’s being handed over to Google, will not see any recompense for their efforts. Unless perhaps they are, or will soon be, Reddit shareholders.

So what’s the way forward then for people simply seeking accurate information in response to a search engine query? There are of course alternatives, subscription search service Kagi being among them, but it seems to me many will stay with what they know.

And what’s the way forward for the small independent publishers, whose livelihoods have been impacted, by these recent changes? That’s not so clear at the moment. They might see some traffic from other search engines, and other channels, but hardly enough to keep their operations viable. One can only hope the big search players come to their senses, but that sadly seems like a big ask.

Workers using cafes as offices may reduce their profitability

3 April 2024

Malcolm Knox, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:

Then there are rents, insurance, equipment and other fixed costs. In a Sydney suburb near me, a new cafe is paying $5000 a week in rent. At $1000 per 7am-to-1pm shift, they need to be selling 300 coffees a day to make it worth their while. That’s nearly one a minute. They don’t often make money on food, which requires more infrastructure such as cooking, storing, plates and so on. It’s all down to their coffee price.

Cafes are a great stand-by for the WFH crowd, an office away from the home office. They’re somewhere to work, be in the company of others, while enjoying a coffee. Or two. Or three. In fact, the more the merrier, so far as the cafe is concerned.

But as much as I love the idea of working in a cafe, I do so infrequently. And then in short bursts — an hour tops — and I will buy at least one coffee and a cake — valued at maybe a little more than ten dollars — to make my stay at least partially worthwhile for the cafe. But even then, I’m short-changing the owners, as they’re hoping to earn closer to forty dollars an hour on the table I occupy.

Running a cafe you see, is an expensive undertaking, and WFH workers who buy a single cup of coffee, and expect to have the same table to themselves all day, are doing the cafe a distinct disservice. I’m fortunate to have a couple of hot-desk options if I don’t want to work at home, virtually negating the need to use a cafe, something I’m sure owners are grateful for. Instead, I’ll come by for a take-out coffee, and be on my way.

Personal branding overkill is killing solo content creators

2 April 2024

A band performs live as an audience member photographs them. Photo by Pexels.

Image courtesy of Pexels.

Rebecca Jennings, writing for Vox, on the tyranny of the personal brand, and the stifling effect they are having on content creators:

The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from 9-to-5 middle managers to astronauts to housecleaners — you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand. For some, it looks like updating your LinkedIn connections whenever you get promoted; for others, it’s asking customers to give you five stars on Google Reviews; for still more, it’s crafting an engaging-but-authentic persona on Instagram. And for people who hope to publish a bestseller or release a hit record, it’s “building a platform” so that execs can use your existing audience to justify the costs of signing a new artist.

Back in the day, and I’m talking fifteen plus years ago, if you had any sort of online presence you effectively had a personal brand. It was a term that was frequently bandied about, often quite casually, but to me seemed like a set of (self-determined) guidelines to adhere to.

Boiled down, a personal brand helped maintain a consistency across your online activities. It was quite simple, mostly.

For someone like me, as a blogger/self-publisher, it meant standardising the avatar/log on my website, Twitter page, and things like (the long gone) MyBlogLog, and I was set. Back to blogging I went. Although some people took their personal brand (or, more specifically, the idea of a personal brand) more seriously than others, maintaining one was very much a part time effort. That’s because if you were a content creator (however you defined that: blogger, photographer, musician, artist, designer, author, whatever), being creative was what you did first and foremost. Times have changed.

Yet this is not the place I thought we would, one day, end up in. I do not rate myself as an artist, but I vividly recall the excitement the self-publishing potential of the internet evoked, when I launched the first iteration of disassociated in 1997. Back in the day, the internet presented itself as a space where creatives could carve out a niche of their own, free of intermediaries such as newspaper and book publishers, and record companies.

If they had something they wanted to share with the world, there was no longer anything stopping them. All they had to do was find an audience. And as a bonus, there a possibility they may even be able to make a little money from their craft in, what were then, newly minted roles as content creators. They could deal directly with anyone who was interested in their wares. Outside the costs of hosting a website, and owning a domain name, no one in the middle would be taking a cut.

A whole new age of opportunity seemed to be dawning.

And for a while, some creatives, musicians, writers, and other content creators, did well in this new self-publishing wonderland. Back then, these people centred their enterprise, their brand, their personal brand, on a website, and did so for some time. Even during the early years of the first decade of the twenty-first century, social media channels were far and few between.

Friendster and MySpace were among them, but they were largely for personal use. Facebook, Flickr, Reddit, and Twitter, began to appear, and at first were used as side-line web presences. Creatives were grateful for the extra exposure they offered, but generally didn’t stray far from their websites. But as the likes of Twitter evolved, some of the first self-made influencers began to emerge. By self-made, I mean people who were not celebrities, or music or movie stars, but had garnered large followings on the platform, in their own right.

They may not have had millions of followers, initially, but with several tens of thousands, were the envy of many. And so the shift began. Creatives wanting a spot in the limelight, began devoting more time and energy to social media. YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok added to the frenzy when they arrived. Social media channels had the audiences already. Massive audiences. It was only a matter of finding a slice of the collective gaze.

Content creators could throw out the SEO handbook; they no longer needed to drag visitors, kicking and screaming, onto their websites. Before long, the big social media channels were just about the only game in town, and if you weren’t on-board, you were out in the cold. Long gone was the content creator’s individually owned and branded website.

That in turn, heralded another change. Instead of being a part time web designer, content creators were taking on the role of marketers, and full time administrators of their personal brand. Fine of course if you have the luxury of a social media manager who can take care of your self-promotion, leaving you to focus on whatever it is you do. But solo content creators usually do not have that luxury. So when creatives are spending more time maintaining their personal brand, and less on creative or artistic output, something’s clearly not right.

How is anyone meant to bring forth quality work, when they’re thinking only of self-promotion? No doubt some are managing, but many would be struggling. But personal branding overkill is only part of the problem. The returns for content creators aren’t what they used to be.

Publishing advances for authors have decreased, as have royalty payments for musicians. This is partly a supply matter. With so many artists and content creators vying for audience attention, some are going to be overlooked. Musicians also have to contend with the algorithms on the music streaming services. If their work isn’t put on high-rotation, few ears are going to hear it. And recent changes to the way Spotify makes royalty payments is only going to make matters worse. To be eligible to receive a royalty, a track must be listened to at least one thousand times a year.

What an appalling, and sad, state of affairs, one far, far, removed from the almost utopic cyberspace realm the self-publishers of the late 1990’s envisaged. Certainly the problems are easy to identify, but the solutions are going to be little more elusive. In the meantime, perhaps some consolation can be taken form the artists themselves. I like to think they’ll come through this. They’re survivors; they’re used to doing it tough. Not that anyone should be using that to their advantage.

An app that points to centre of the Milky Way galaxy

26 March 2024

Night sky and stars seen through gap in a rock canyon, photo by Pexels.

Image courtesy of Pexels.

Tangentially related to my previous post… product designer and technologist Matt Webb has created an app, named Galactic Compass (link to Apple app store), that points to the centre of the galaxy.

When on the (far less light polluted) NSW Central Coast, I can kind of look down from the tail of the constellation Scorpius (the scorpion), and be observing the right patch of the night sky.

When back amongst the super bright lights of Sydney though, that can be a little trickier. Like, find a star, any star, let alone the Scorpius constellation.

Read also Galactic Compass’ origin/development story, the app was built with help from ChatGPT.

A patch for computer software one light-day away on Voyager 1

25 March 2024

One of the computers on NASA’s deep space probe Voyager 1 is experiencing some sort of malfunction, with recent signals from the probe containing no usable data. Mission engineers are apparently confident the problem can be resolved, even though Voyager 1 is almost a light-day distant, meaning it’ll take time to apply a fix:

Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s response to reach antennas on the ground. So the team received the results of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers began working to decode the data, and on March 10, they determined that it contains a memory readout.

Although Voyager 1, and deep space counterpart Voyager 2, have left the solar system and are in interstellar space, it is estimated it will take Voyager 1 another three hundred years to reach the Oort cloud. The vastly scattered debris, rocky remnants of the formation of the solar system, that constitutes the Oort cloud, may extend more than two light years from the Sun. That’s about half way to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.

So to be truly beyond the solar system, I imagine the Voyager probes will need to clear the Oort cloud first. We might be waiting sometime for that to happen. It’s incredible the way mission controllers can keep tabs on deep space missions though, and trouble shoot, and perhaps remedy problems, despite their distance from the Sun.

About twenty years ago, scientists were puzzled by changes in the trajectories of deep space probes Pioneers 10 and 11. Somehow both craft, then located in the Kuiper belt, which is situated beyond the orbit of Neptune, appeared to have slowed down slightly. All sorts of theories were advanced to account for the anomaly, including the idea that gravity may be behaving in ways not seen before.

After analysing gargantuan quantities of data, mission engineers determined that heat loss was having a subtle influence on the movements of the probes, in that it was acting a little like a brake. Contact with both vessels had been lost by that stage, so even if a fix could have been devised, it unfortunately could not have been applied.

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